Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 23 - Chapter 3.6

6

After all that, I ended up leaving the area with Yun Sudra.

Ai Fa and the others were still in the midst of being congratulated for their victories, and Reina Ruu and the other observers were busily talking to anyone and everyone. We still had more work to do to prepare the rest of the pasta, so I figured it was important to enjoy the banquet now while we had the chance.

“Oh, Asuta and Yun Sudra. We just finished grilling some fresh meat!” a Fou woman called out to us as we walked. They were cooking various cuts of giba meat on a tray brought from the Fa house, and there were a large number of sautéed vegetables that had been prepared in advance piled up on top of a plate sitting on a log stand next to the stove.

“Thank you. Would you like to have something to eat now?”

“Yes,” Yun Sudra nodded, briskly transferring some veggies onto her own plate. Then she was served some piping hot giba meat to go on top. A dressing made with a variety of ingredients, some of which were reused from the giba bone broth, was also poured over her food. The people of the forest’s edge didn’t approve of wasting ingredients, so whenever we extracted starch from chatchi or had leftover marinade that had done its job, we always employed them in some sort of other dish. Considering how many things we used to remove the stench of the giba bones during the boiling process, there was no way we could simply throw them away.

And so, the aria, nenon, myamuu, and ramam we had used for that purpose had all been reused in this dressing. But if we had just used them as they were, the overwhelming aroma of the bones would transfer over, so we had also added broth from when we had made the char siu, as well as some myamuu and chitt seeds. We had mashed up the vegetables and fruit that had already gotten all mushy during the six-hour boiling process, and then mixed the seasonings in. Then we had diced up the seaweed that had been used in the soup. The dark brown dressing really paired quite well with giba meat.

After tasting it, Yun Sudra said, “It’s delicious, isn’t it?” with a smile. She really did seem more mature than usual with her hair down.

The Fou woman then narrowed her eyes and said, “You know, the two of you would make a lovely couple. You’re seventeen, Asuta, and Yun Sudra, you’re fifteen, right? It would make us all so happy from the depths of our hearts to see the Fa and Sudra form blood ties.”

I was left at a loss for words, while Yun Sudra’s face went beet red.

We stepped away still holding our plates, and with her face still glowing, Yun Sudra bowed and said, “I’m so sorry.”

“Ah, no, you have nothing to apologize for.”

“But the way she misunderstood things was terribly unpleasant for you, wasn’t it?” she said, her gaze cast downward as she brought a spoonful of meat to her mouth. “My feelings haven’t changed in the time since I told you about them... But I most definitely don’t want to do anything that would trouble you, so I hope that you haven’t been worried about that.”

“I haven’t... But I still don’t think there’s any need for you to look so sorry about it.”

Yun Sudra had told me that she intended to hold on to her feelings for me until one of us got married, and she had said that knowing full well how I felt about Ai Fa. She had then said that if Ai Fa and I got married, she would congratulate us with all of her heart...and that she wouldn’t ever let anyone but my clan head have me.

Yun Sudra smiled gently, then looked over the crowded plaza. “I feel truly blessed that we were able to hold a banquet like this one... But at the same time, I don’t know what I’d do if a Fou or Ran man fell for me.”

“Right...”

“Members of the Deen and Liddo are not permitted to marry members of unconnected clans without the permission of the Zaza. And the Fou and Ran have long been relatives, so it seems only natural that their eyes would turn toward the Fa and Sudra now,” she continued, and then she broke out in an earnest smile. “You might get women asking to marry you too, Asuta. The Fou and Ran wouldn’t hesitate to try to form ties with the Fa, after all.”

The Fa and Sudra were bloodlines destined to die out if they didn’t form ties with other clans, and the Fou and Ran only had each other in terms of relatives. They would all dwindle away before long at this rate, so it was only natural that they would seek to make new ties.

Thinking about it like that, the Fa and Sudra are perfect for them.

Forming blood ties wasn’t something that people did carelessly at the forest’s edge. Marriage could never be taken lightly. Such bonds were valued above all else, so creating a new one required having the resolve to link not only your own fates together, but those of both of your clans as well.

Still, the Fa clan only had two members, and the Sudra only nine. With numbers that small, it would be relatively easy to judge whether or not we would make for fitting relatives.

On top of that, the Fa and Sudra had clearly shown them our strength, both in our everyday actions and at this festival of the hunt. Even setting my own clan aside, I hadn’t been at all surprised to hear that Baadu Fou wanted to form blood ties with the Sudra clan.

That’s how clans leave their names behind here at the forest’s edge.

Taking the Fou clan as an example, they had eighteen members. That number wasn’t all that different from the Lea clan, which was second only to the Rutim among the subordinates of the Ruu. They had reached that size after absorbing their own subordinate clans that had collapsed over the past several decades, until only the Ran remained. The rest had all cast aside their clan names in order to join the Fou. In fact, during the previous clan head meeting, they had reported the fall of three of those clans. In just a single year, three whole clans had lost their names.

Meanwhile, according to what I had been told, the Lea had been under the Ruu for quite some time. Rather than needing to absorb other clans, they had been able to maintain their numbers simply through marriage exchanges.

As long as the Ruu, their parent clan, didn’t fall into decline, the Lea wouldn’t either. But if the Fou didn’t form new blood ties, they would have to survive with only the Ran under them. In which case, their blood would eventually grow too concentrated and they would have trouble finding marriage candidates.

That’s what makes clans with no subordinates like the Fa and the Sudra the perfect marriage candidates. With the Gaaz, Ratsu, and Beim, there’d be questions about which side would become the parent clan, and they would need to expend a great deal of effort to determine if all of the members of those clans were worthy of becoming their relatives.

At any rate, forming new blood ties would mean their name would live on into later generations. It was the same for the Sudra clan too. They only had a small number of unwed people, but those people could still form new bonds for them. Ultimately, as things stood, the only clan destined to die out was the Fa.

I was starting to feel more and more emotional for some reason. However, that was when folks started calling out to me from all directions.

“Asuta, are you on break? If you want, why not try some of this cooking?”

“This is all the curry we have left, Asuta.”

“Asuta, have you seen Toor Deen? We want to fry up some fresh giba cutlets, but we’re still not as good at it as she is.”

There were over thirty women here, so I hadn’t memorized all of their names. However, every one of them were familiar faces, more or less.

I considered them all to be valuable comrades here at the forest’s edge. Even if we didn’t share any ties of blood, they were still important to me. And if any of them happened to make a marriage proposal...I would feel terrible about having to turn them down.

I’ve heard that Vina Ruu has turned down countless men. My circumstances are different from hers, but it’s definitely gotta be rough, having to brush off someone’s affections like that.

Still, I didn’t feel like distancing myself from people because I was worried about something that hadn’t happened yet. I had been born in a foreign land, was no good at anything but cooking even though I was a man, and had no intention of taking a bride... I just hoped that everyone would keep being this friendly with me, even though I was such an oddball.

But when I thought about Yun Sudra, my heart really did ache. I still felt guilty, even now. She could have been free to pick any husband she wanted if she hadn’t gotten involved with me... Or at least, that was how I saw it.

“Is something the matter, Asuta?” Yun Sudra asked, staring at my face curiously. Then she adorably furrowed her brow and said, “Ah, you look like you’re terribly sorry about something, but you don’t have to be.”

“No, but...”

“I’m the one who was being selfish. And I’m at fault for worrying you like this too. It’s not right for a person of the forest’s edge to fixate on feelings that will never be fulfilled...” Yun Sudra said. But then her smile suddenly returned. “Even if I asked you to marry me now, you would turn me down, right? That would be the end of it, normally. And yet, I still can’t cast aside my feelings. I’ve been clinging to a fleeting hope all this time, which is terribly self-centered of me. If the other women knew about this, they would surely chew me out.”

“There’s no need for you to put yourself down like that.”

“I’m not putting myself down. I’m simply speaking the truth,” Yun Sudra replied, taking on a teasing look that was quite unusual for her. “Still, I have to say, you’re committing the same mistake I am. Both of us are clinging to feelings that won’t be fulfilled. So shouldn’t you be worrying about the person you love rather than me?”

I felt like my cheeks might have been going a bit red as my face was illuminated by the bonfires here and there throughout the plaza. Yun Sudra just looked at me with satisfaction, then pointed diagonally ahead.

“Which dish was cooking on that stove, again? Let’s go ahead and eat a whole lot before we have to get back to work on the pasta.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I replied with a nod, getting my thoughts back in order.

I was the one who had proposed this banquet, so I couldn’t get all depressed in the middle of it. Letting my emotions get the better of me had to wait until after the banquet was over.

I walked alongside the smiling Yun Sudra toward another stove. So far, we’d had the grilled meat and sautéed vegetables with the dressing, a large number of meatballs, giba curry, and giba cutlets. Now we were faced with the fresh poitan dishes. There was an especially large stand here, atop which was a mountain of cooked poitan. The fully ready baked poitan had been specially prepared with gyama dried milk kneaded into them, and there was also okonomiyaki being cooked on a metal tray nearby.

After taking a slice of each, we turned to face the next stove, where a couple people had separated themselves from the crowd and were arguing about something. When I looked closer, I found that they were Fei Beim and the Beim clan head. Since I still hadn’t properly greeted the clan head, I went ahead and approached them.

“It’s been a while, clan head of the Beim. Is there some sort of issue?”

“Ah, Asuta. No, it’s nothing serious. My clan head here is just being excessively stubborn,” Fei Beim said.

“I’m not being stubborn. You’re being selfish.” The Beim clan head was a middle-aged man with a small yet bulky build. The nineteen-year-old Fei Beim was his youngest daughter, so he had to be well over forty, with a face that reminded me of a heike crab. Fei Beim had been tugging on his hand for some reason.

“There are sweets over there, but since there are a lot of women and children in the area, he won’t go anywhere near them,” she explained with a sour look.

“I’m telling you, I have no need to. There’s plenty of other food to eat without having to bother with all that.”

“But you were really looking forward to the sweets, weren’t you? If you miss out on having any because of your stubbornness, it’ll leave you in a bad mood later, which will be a real pain to deal with.” Fei Beim turned my way, still pouting. The somewhat squarish contours of her face made her resemble her father quite a bit. “Apparently, he ate one of the sweets you served in the castle town. I’ve tried adding sugar to poitan and chatchi at home myself, but he’s never satisfied with the results.”

“Hmm, which sweet could you have had...? It must have been at that first dinner party with Timalo. Ah, that means it was the chatchi mochi. We should have some of that here today.”

The Beim clan head’s mouth went taut. He turned away with his frown still firmly in place. “Hmph! There are only women and children swarming around those sweets, right? That isn’t the sort of thing a hunter should eat.”

“That’s not true at all. The people who are enjoying fruit wine right now are probably just leaving them for later. If you try to drink fruit wine while also having sweets, the sourness of it will really stand out,” Fei Beim said.

The Beim clan head fell silent.

“Even Donda Ruu and the other hunters of the Ruu clan enjoy sweets. Chatchi mochi in particular has a different texture to it than other desserts, so men can enjoy it too,” I added, in support of what Fei Beim had said. “If you want, I can come with you. I’m technically a man too, after all. Toor Deen’s even better at making sweets than I am, so how about we enjoy what she’s prepared for the banquet together?”

As we soothed the hesitant Beim clan head, we went ahead and plunged into the crowd. There certainly did seem to be a lot of women and children around, but I also saw some young hunters here and there. I greeted them as we went, and before long we arrived at a wooden plate sitting on a stand.

The sweets on offer were chatchi mochi and a baked poitan dish. The chatchi mochi came in three varieties: one that was plain with caramel drizzled over the top, one that used cocoa-like gigi leaves, and one that used karon milk. The baked sweet came in both plain and gigi-flavored varieties, and there was fresh cream, custard cream, and gigi cream available as toppings.

“So this is the sweet you call chatchi mochi? It certainly has an unusual shape,” Fei Beim remarked as she grabbed one of each type for her clan head and then took a bite herself. When she did, her little eyes shot open wide in surprise. “This is delicious... I feel embarrassed that I just tried to mix chatchi and sugar together.”

“There’s a particular method to making chatchi mochi. Why don’t I give you lessons on how to make it sometime?”

When I gave them a try, I found that all of the varieties of chatchi mochi were unsurprisingly fantastic. Their sweetness was relatively restrained, but they didn’t feel lacking in the least. It was a fine, gentle flavor that reflected Toor Deen’s personality perfectly.

When the Beim clan head tried them, he let out a “Hrmm” and made a face that I couldn’t quite read as he turned to look at me. “Asuta, the women prepared this rather than you?”

“Yes. Toor Deen of the Deen clan led the efforts. She’s more skilled at making sweets than I am.”

“Hmm...”

“As you can tell, she’s come pretty far in determining the proper amount of each ingredient to use, but anyone who follows her instructions should be able to prepare something similar. It’s not like it’s difficult to make, after all.”

If you wanted to make a plain one with caramel, all you needed in terms of ingredients were chatchi and sugar. And as for the ones that used karon milk, it wasn’t all that extravagant of an ingredient either, costing the same amount as fruit wine. With just a single lesson, Fei Beim would definitely be able to make delicious chatchi mochi that would bring her family joy too.

“Ah, so this is where you were, Asuta,” a man’s voice called out from down low. It was Raielfam Sudra, who was shorter than even the women around us.

“Ah, hey there. Are you done with the congratulations?”

“Indeed. We were finally set free. Being congratulated is quite an ordeal when you’re dealing with over eighty people,” Raielfam Sudra said, snatching up a baked sweet and popping it into his mouth. Li Sudra was standing there next to him, directing an elegant smile my way.

“You did good work today too, Li Sudra. Are you feeling all right...?”

“Yes, of course. We haven’t reached the point where it will become difficult for me to do my daily work yet.” I had first learned of Li Sudra’s pregnancy at the end of the black month. Over three months had passed since then, but I couldn’t spy any visible changes. Of course, that was partially because married women wore loose single-piece dresses. “But I seem to have become overly sensitive to certain smells, so I was unfortunately unable to try the bone soup.”

“That’s a real shame. Do you think it’ll settle down soon?”

Of course, there was no point in me trying to comfort her with my hazy knowledge. After all, she had already given birth twice.

Li Sudra’s face was radiating affection as she gently brought a hand up to her stomach. After glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, Raielfam Sudra turned his eyes toward us once more.

“That talk of soup reminded me that I was supposed to be looking for you, Asuta and Yun. They wanted to know if that pasta dish could just be left to boil on its own.”

“I see. Thank you. Well then, I guess it’s about time we headed back,” I said.

“Yes, of course,” Yun Sudra agreed.

After saying farewell to the folks around us, we headed back to our original posts.

The crowd was denser here than at a Ruu banquet, so it took a fair bit of effort to move about. I took care not to bump into any of the men who had gotten drunk as we worked our way through.

When our destination finally came into view, a golden-brown light flashed at the edge of my field of view. Ai Fa was talking to someone, both of them being lit by the glow of one of the bonfires surrounding the plaza.

“That’s the pole tugging winner, Jou Ran, isn’t it?” Yun Sudra said in a quiet voice, staring in the same direction I was. “That man looked like he was talking to Ai Fa a lot, even up in the victors’ seats... Does he have a connection to your clan head like Saris Ran Fou does?”

“No, not that I know of. He might just have some thoughts he wants to share with Ai Fa about her being a hunter, though.”

“I see,” Yun Sudra replied, looking kind of uneasy for some reason. Actually, her expression reminded me of the one I had seen on Saris Ran Fou’s face earlier in the day. It seemed like both of them had reacted in the same kind of way to Jou Ran approaching Ai Fa, so perhaps they were sensing something I couldn’t.

As for my clan head, she looked as commanding as always while she was interacting with him. Jou Ran was simply smiling at her, just like he had been earlier in the day. There didn’t seem to be anything suspicious going on, but if I had to find something strange to point out, I would say that it was odd to see Ai Fa talking one-on-one with someone she wasn’t close to.

I interact with women a lot, so it’d be pretty small-minded of me to get all out of sorts over something like this... I thought to myself, deciding to focus on the work in front of me as I headed toward one particular stove, where I found a sizable crowd eagerly waiting for more pasta to be made available to them.